1. Field of Invention
The field of application of the present invention pertains to the development of memory generators installed and running in Computer Aided Design environments.
This invention relates to a high performance single port RAM generator architecture intended to generate and operate different RAMs structures in a CAD environment. The RAM generator architecture includes a Static RAM matrix and a self timed control logic.
2. Discussion of the Related Art
As it is well known, the technical development in the microelectronics field has allowed the integration of millions of transistors on a single chip.
The problem of how to design such complex integrated circuits, and how to test their operation capabilities, has drawn to a new design methodology and to new design instruments.
From a full custom design approach, that was intended to optimize the silicon area to the detriment of the time spent on the circuit design, the modern approach is now based on the so-called structural design that uses predetermined circuit blocks, each block having known functions and characteristics if taken alone or in combination.
Thus, a library containing hundreds of circuitry components is nowadays available for the circuit designer.
As a result, in order to develop library efficiency, integrated circuits generators have been elaborated just to conform the library elements according to the user's necessity.
Therefore, it's not even necessary to expand the library for including all the possible options of a certain circuit. It is sufficient to maintain a base circuit and a suitable program capable to modify the base circuit according to specific requirements.
An example of this technique is given by memory boards built by a basic cell which is repeated for a predetermined number of times in order to obtain a memory structure suitable for a specific application.
In such a manner, the number of words, the word size and the circuit layout may be designed choosing among a range of parameters.
Consequently, this prior art solution requires a circuit generator library containing all possible basic circuits covering all possible user's requirements.
Therefore, the complexity of the basic circuits in of the circuit generator library is the critical point of the prior art solution.
Each basic circuit included in the circuit generator library should be useful to tolerate any possible parameters modification introduced by the user offering substantially a self adapting disposition.
A first object of the present invention is to provide a single-port RAM generator having such structural and functional features as to afford variations in the parameters introduced by the user, thereby to overcome the drawbacks of prior art solutions.
A further object of the present invention is to provide a RAM generator containing all the elements to use the same basic generation cell with a self timing architecture to generate internal signals to perform RAM operation. Timing must change automatically if different RAM sizes are employed to achieve high speed, and low power consumption, even with smaller memory cells.